bad enough playing a municipal course peopled with blue-collar workers and pensioners,” Fairbanks reiterated. “But I have always drawn the line at women.”
My pensioner father flinched at Fairbanks’s list of those imposing their unwanted selves on the world of golf. But who cared? I had robbed five banks in order to afford the leisure to golf at all. It was love at first swing when the game first caught my eye across a crowded green. Everything about it feeds my passion, including the fact that golf started in Canada fifteen years before the States. My only complaint about the game is attitudes you sometimes run into: attempts to reserve it for an upper class elite, or, as in Fairbanks’s case, for men only as well.
Meanwhile, the man hadn’t stopped talking. But for lack of an “off” switch, his nattering was like one of those canned lectures you stick in your ear at museums and galleries. “Since women can’t be considered serious players,” he was saying, “it behooves management to restrict their presence at peak times, especially weekends and holidays.”
I moved to the tee and prepared to hit. “Wait,” he held up a hand to stop me just as I began my swing. “I’ve noticed you’ve been topping the ball. Try moving up and shift your weight toward your heels.” Following that advice, I sliced neatly into a sand trap about seventy-five yards to the left.
My blissful vision of the perfect game blipped out like a soap bubble, and a red haze intruded between me and the rest of the world. An early warning sign of anger. Use the techniques I learned inside, I told myself. Positive self-talk. You can do it. Deep breaths. Remember to have a sense of humour…
“I adamantly opposed my club letting women into membership,” the man went on as though no play had intervened.
His nephew Freddie was up next. Fairbanks advised him to maintain a proper set-up this time and watch that back swing. “Fools never learn.” Fairbanks shook his head as Freddie dribbled off into the rough. Freddie’s face reddened. I knew that expression. I’d seen it on the faces of men just before they knifed somebody in the shower room.
“And so I was forced to resign my membership,” Fairbanks droned on, as though we cared. He stepped up to the tee like Mussolini surveying Italy, then made an abysmal shot, just like all the rotten shots I’d seen him produce since the first hole. And he was smiling and nodding as though this was another brilliant ploy in his grand scheme. Or maybe he was just delusional when it came to his own game.
I looked over at Freddie. He was rubbing his fingers over a ball he had taken from his pocket, the way you do with a gun before a knockover. Thanks to prison, I’ve upgraded my pickpocket skills considerably, which meant I was able to relieve him of the ball for a closer look. What he’d built was as pretty a little death trap as I was likely to see outside prison. Freddie had taken the ball apart and packed the inside with an explosive. Probably had a detonator in the other pocket. One swipe with a club and whammo! If Freddie was the amateur he appeared to be, it would open up a crater the size of an underground parking garage.
I followed him. “Drop something, buddy?” I flipped the loaded ball back his way and a look of horror crossed his face when he slapped his pocket and discovered it missing. “Don’t even think of taking your uncle out while I’m around,” I said.
“He deserves it,” Freddie said stubbornly, his face flushing. “He’s humiliated me for the last time. Today he gets it.”
“Wrong, Freddie. Some OTHER day he gets it. When I’m gone.” I gave him my toughest prison face, the one that made the range boss decide to loan me his TV for the length of my stay behind bars. If anything were to explode in a foursome I was in, the cops would stop investigating when they came to me, what with my record of blowing holes in any bank vault I’d ever encountered. “Now get rid of that stuff,” I told him.
Leaving Freddie shaking in his spikes, I hiked over to the sand trap, pointedly ignoring Fairbanks’ analysis of my stance and shoulders. After three tries with a wedge, my hook shot shanked out of the sand and hit a tree. My game had died and gone to hell.
Meanwhile, Fairbanks babbled on. “I know my former club was devastated to lose a member of my capacity in the field of golf. How often had I instructed some foursome on the art of the proper swing! I gave generously of my time on the putting green to all who ventured forth, nor did I spare analysis when spotting an errant slicer. My departure has cost them dearly, I dare say. Who now beside the pro is there to selflessly aid the individual members by pointing out the flaws in their games?”
They probably held a great big celebration, I thought, as we reached the fourth hole. Fairbanks’ tinny little voice reverberated like a cheap radio in my ears. “They implored me to stay, of course. ‘Oh, no, Fairbanks, we cannot lose you.’ But I remained adamant. ‘Allowing women equal rights and privileges with male members has ruined this club,’ I said, ‘and will no doubt herald the demise of any other where the issue of women’s equality is raised.’”
There was a honking noise behind us. Two carts had come even with us, and the women were gesturing to play through. “Honk, honk.” One of the women passengers wielded a bicycle horn in one hand and a beer in the other.
Fairbanks acted as though he had heard nothing. He stepped to the tee and began to position a scruffy old ball.
“Move it, Mac!” The women were growing restless. They leaned back in their parked carts, feet hanging out as they opened more beer and lamented the lack of proper protocol in our group. “Holdin’ up the game,” one of the women complained. “It sez right here on the scorecard: ‘Faster golfers’, that’s us, ‘may play through.’” I shrugged. Freddie was still sulking, and my father was trying to make up his mind to speak to them.
The ladies were a mixed quartet. The first and noisiest cart held two florid-faced plump women who obviously hadn’t been treated to a rear view of themselves in stretch pants. The other held a slim blonde and a tiny brunette, the kind of women you’d throw your coat across a puddle for.
Fairbanks postured on the tee as though he were under camera scrutiny at the Masters. He hit. I didn’t bother following the track of his ball. Another birdie, ho, hum. He was the only one paying attention to the score anyway. Then he crossed in front of the carts as though they didn’t exist and bent to stow his driver.
“C’mon ladies. No sense letting this particular jerk hold us up,” the brunette said. She revved her little cart engine like a dragster and took aim at Fairbanks. “Go get ’em, Cecily,” one of the women yelled as they bounded forward.
“Ow, ow, ow!” Fairbanks dropped his bag and hopped around, cradling his left foot in both hands. “Did you see that? She ran over my foot! Deliberately took aim and ran over…”
“Why would she do that, Fairbanks?” my father said.
“Cecily, the brunette in the second cart, is in the process of divorcing me. She has an acrimonious nature. And did I mention extravagant? Probably playing with brand-new balls.” He gestured towards the women. “Cecily knew Freddie and I were playing today. Perhaps she even managed to discover our tee-off time?” He turned to his nephew.
While he read the kid out, I moved ahead and approached Cecily, who was finishing her drive.
When I got her alone, I said, “That’s the last run I want you to make at the guy. I imagine your plan is to get him jumping when he sees the cart coming till you see your chance to run him off one of the cliffs.”
“Was I that obvious?” Cecily said, clenching her lovely fists. “The man’s a monster, and this divorce is a nightmare. Besides, accidents happen all the time on golf courses.”
“Things like heart attacks or heat strokes or getting beaned with a ball happen,” I agreed. “Not murder. A golf cart’s not heavy enough to kill him. I don’t want anything to happen to the guy while I’m playing with him, okay?”
She put her head down and fluttered her eyelashes, but in the end she agreed with me. I wandered back to the others. Fairbanks was too caught up in lecturing my father on the length of his swing to notice